Lament of the Steamer Myron
The Miztec was built as a 3-masted schooner in 1890. She was later converted to a schooner barge and served as a consort for lumber hookers on the Great Lakes. She escaped destruction in a severe 1919 storm that sank her longtime companion, the SS Myron, only to sink on the traditional day of bad luck, Friday the 13th, 1921, with the loss of all hands. She came to rest on Lake Superior's bottom off Whitefish Point near the Myron.
Say yes to this and it all will go dark,
quiet and silt-filled, gilded
with the fractured exoskeletons of every
small beast that laid its last
upon this seabed.
It is a tomb for all things.
Say yes and you may be enamored
within the mighty timber fist of me.
Oh Miztec, oh mine,
you have drifted down and I say
I always knew you would come back
but stroke your pretty hull with my bare
and barren lips, to remind them.
They have, aimlessly and without want,
pulled their haunches back to expose
the little pearls beneath. My nose has
fallen into its socket and for that I am
sorry. My body was once grand and unflinching
but wood gets buttery when left on the rock
bottom of Lake Superior and I was not sure
you would return. I lost myself in the weight
of freshwater rot. To the rust.
To the great pike and pickerel. Forgive me.
Speak to me, black-hearted west wind.
Speak of the night when you ripped
two lovers from their braided bonds
and scattered their warm parts
like one may find the other
and repair them. Miztec, my love,
you dropped your anchors,
swung your bow into the wind,
and endured the violence alone.
I slipped my head under the waves
and was silent after only four minutes
of screaming. This was not my first
time going down to the dark and the cold.
I knew you would find me, raise me
and bless my bloated foremast
with fine oils. Set me on a course
from Munising to Buffalo. Come
with me, with your three spines toward the sun,
and we will eat the whitefish that churn
beneath us. We will sing the coal tunes
that sound like 400 years of dead things
dredged back into the bright air
and burned, ceremonious, on our pyres.
At Salt Point, they found the living of us.
All that once trickled over our skin
and crittered into our pores,
all that we shared, and all that was
abandoned from us, washed up
with unfestered linens
and impractical vests of rubber
and horsehair insulating
their ice-sheer skin.
The earth cradled them
in her thawing belly
and sprinkled baby’s breath
around their fallow foreheads.
Bury them, bury them,
sink yourself into the unnamed,
unmarked graves and whisper,
“These are the ones that we
broke like clamshells
against the outcroppings.
Like hullboards
against the water.
Like me
against you.”
Fight, I say, and kiss your forehead,
my wind-cracked cheeks turned Vermillion.
Point yourself home, you say,
and whisper mariner rhymes
that echo like my boiler pulse
until lake water sneaks into my veins
and makes black the bright hum.
Down, we say, and I inhale and you
do not follow. You— miracle, Miztec,
my love— will find another. You will float
on warm and gilded seas.
How I miss your towage.
How you miss my salvage.
How the rugose and fractal, finally,
embrace us both. After two years,
how good it is to press my body
into yours again. How quiet and how
resounding. Now, the drift
and trickle and silt
welcome us and we
hoist a shimmering bottle
over our bows, to anoint us with glass,
as we step through the threshold
and into our newlywed home.
